When Love Is a Man
by Melcena
Summary: It's like the way the key fits the lock. 5+1. Sap. Ramblish.


Author: Melcena  
Contact: fragile @ wynterchylde . com  
Title: When Love Is a Man  
Archive? Ask. Probably not.  
Paring: 5+1  
Warnings: Sap, stream of conciousness rambling. Short. Odd.  
Comments: This is strange. Just one of those little open-up-notepad-and-start-typing ficlets. It sort of touches on my 5x1 theory, but not too much.  
  
/.../ = italics  
  
  
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What was it, Wufei found himself wondering, that had ever drawn him to this man in the first place? It wasn't his beauty, though he obviously had that in ample amounts, or his personality (or lack thereof, as some would argue), or even his sheer presence. Anyone, Wufei said to himself, that knew Wufei to any degree would never have chosen Heero as someone he would be attracted to, much less in love with. Of course, he admitted, anyone who know him to that any degree would never have guessed he would be involved with another man. Thus far, no one had been unwise enough to ask him directly, or even indirectly, how it had happened but the question was plain enough in their faces. In truth, Wufei himself sometimes wondered about it.  
  
Before Heero he could not remember even one circumstance where he found himself attracted to another male. In fact, he could barely find any memory of being attracted to a female. In the end he always came to the conclusion that marriage at the age of fourteen had soured him to relationships early. If such a messy thing as "war" had not intruded in his hitherto quiet life, he was certain he and his wife would eventually have settled down and at least learned to tolerate each other. Of course, he was reluctant to admit, he had been far past toleration when she'd been taken from him. However, that was not at all the way things had worked out. Instead, the person that he admired most - for her strength, for her passion, for her disregard of tradition - the person he had begun to love, died. In his place, he felt. So, in the only expression of grief he knew, he'd simply adopted her causes and striven to become as much like her as possible. And, in his estimation, failed miserably.  
  
During that time, he entertained no thoughts of love or romance. Everything was strength and battle and honor. He barely noted women save for their gender, if even that, and was little more than aware of the world outside the war. In most senses he had became asexual - a sword in the hands of justice. To him, it was very black and white. Right and wrong, attack and retreat.  
  
Even at the last battle of the war where he found himself the tool of a glorious death he did not allow himself a glimmer of emotion beyond what had become familiar - anger, shame, hate. In the following peace he found himself dissatisfied and restless - useless, the worst fate he could ever have designed for himself. Thousands of scenarios ran through his mind of the smallest things he could have done or done differently that might have bought about a better end. In the end he found himself in the middle of another war with more self-recrimination than ever piled upon his head.  
  
That was when he finally gave in to humanity. When he had faced Heero above the sea, his first thoughts were only of his own honor and worth. The only thing he felt was a need to prove himself the equal or better of this person he had always held above him. Yet listening to Heero's quiet, remorseful questions, watching the most advanced killing machine in the world fall submissive to the ocean, was the first step towards waking what had been sleeping inside him for years.  
  
He supposed that that was what had started it, really. The turning of a key. A key that Heero held all unknowing. Afterwards, after he accepted a position with the Preventers, he often found himself wondering what had become of his former compatriot. While he didn't exactly keep tabs on the other ex-pilots, Quatre was forever in the media spotlight, Trowa a silent shadow at his side. Duo had caused quite an uproar with his sudden string of orphanages and salvage shops. (Here, Wufei would be forever mystified - what had ever possessed the man to start random amounts of both in seperate colonies in seperate sectors - all on the same day? And how in the world had he ever financed it?) Yet there was nothing of the man that was considered by most to be the saviour of the earth. He'd simply vanished.  
  
Thus, it was a surprise when Heero had shown up at Preventers headquaters, almost a year later. Une accepted him quietly and without question and did her utmost to meet his request of anonymity. In keeping with that request, Wufei, grown used to the solitary serenity of his apartment, suddenly found himself with a guest. Oddly, he could not find it within himself to be resentful.   
  
It must have gone from there, he reasoned. The apartment, while spacious enough, was small. With so little space and so much time together, it had only seemed natural as they'd unfolded to each other. For the first time, Wufei found himself sharing not only his past, but his hopes and fears and the depth of the self-loathing that writhed in his bones. Heero had met him with equal sincerity and defended Wufei against himself with startling fierceness. And gradually, Wufei had grown into the comfort of having someone who knew himself at least as well as he did. Someone so close to him that the space between their minds was barely a breath. Someone whose past and pains and dreams might as well have been his own.  
  
Heero was full of revelations. From his shocking lack of inhibitions to his equally suprising need for affectionate contact, each new aspect brought Wufei closer to a sort of equillibrum he thought he'd lost forever. Though, Wufei thought, he would never be able to figure out when exactly he'd begun loving Heero, or that he really even wanted to know, he felt it was easy to see the slow fitting-together of pieces. Because, like pieces of a puzzle, he and Heero had simply... melded. Fully content for, perhaps, the first time in his life, Wufei could not imagine what it would have been like without Heero.   
  
Heero, thought Wufei, would probably tell him he was being foolish spending time thinking about the /why/ of their relationship. This is the way it is, he would say, and the way I want it to be. Then he would simply tease Wufei away from his equivocations with one of his various tools of persuasion. For men of so few words, Wufei had often reflected wryly, both of them were really terribly expressive. In the correct circumstances, of course.  
  
So, he concluded finally, it didn't really matter how his life had ended up where it was. What mattered was that he was happy, and he was loved, and he felt worthy of love. What mattered, was that while he had lost his first home, he had found another - one that he would have for the rest of his life. With Heero, he thought, curling more tightly around the other man, there was nothing he couldn't face.   
  
At peace, he drifted back to sleep.  
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~Fin  
  
  
Ummm... Yeah.  
  
  
  
- Melcena 


End file.
